Search Results

Documents authored by Bolz-Tereick, Carl Friedrich

Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ECOOP.2025.3
Pydrofoil: Accelerating Sail-Based Instruction Set Simulators

Authors: Carl Friedrich Bolz-Tereick, Luke Panayi, Ferdia McKeogh, Tom Spink, and Martin Berger

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 333, 39th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2025)

Abstract
We present Pydrofoil, a multi-stage compiler that generates instruction set simulators (ISSs) from processor instruction set architectures (ISAs) expressed in the high-level, verification-oriented ISA specification language Sail. Pydrofoil achieves a > 230× speedup over the C-based ISS generated by Sail on our benchmarks, thanks to the following insights. (i) An ISS is effectively an interpreter loop, and tracing just-in-time (JIT) compilers have proven effective at accelerating those, albeit mostly for dynamically typed languages. (ii) ISS workloads are highly atypical, dominated by intensive bit manipulation operations. Conventional compiler optimisations for general-purpose programming languages have limited impact for speeding up such workloads. We develop suitable domain-specific optimisations. (iii) Neither tracing JIT compilers, nor ahead-of-time (AOT) compilation alone, even with domain-specific optimisations, suffice for the generation of performant ISSs. Pydrofoil therefore implements a hybrid approach, pairing an AOT compiler with a tracing JIT built on the meta-tracing PyPy framework. AOT and JIT use domain-specific optimisations. Our benchmarks demonstrate that combining AOT and JIT compilers provides significantly greater performance gains than using either compiler alone.
Cite as

Carl Friedrich Bolz-Tereick, Luke Panayi, Ferdia McKeogh, Tom Spink, and Martin Berger. Pydrofoil: Accelerating Sail-Based Instruction Set Simulators. In 39th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 333, pp. 3:1-3:31, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

Copy BibTex To Clipboard

@InProceedings{bolztereick_et_al:LIPIcs.ECOOP.2025.3,
  author =	{Bolz-Tereick, Carl Friedrich and Panayi, Luke and McKeogh, Ferdia and Spink, Tom and Berger, Martin},
  title =	{{Pydrofoil: Accelerating Sail-Based Instruction Set Simulators}},
  booktitle =	{39th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2025)},
  pages =	{3:1--3:31},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-373-7},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{333},
  editor =	{Aldrich, Jonathan and Silva, Alexandra},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ECOOP.2025.3},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-232962},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ECOOP.2025.3},
  annote =	{Keywords: Instruction set architecture, processor, domain-specific language, just-in-time compilation, meta-tracing}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ECOOP.2025.16
A Lightweight Method for Generating Multi-Tier JIT Compilation Virtual Machine in a Meta-Tracing Compiler Framework

Authors: Yusuke Izawa, Hidehiko Masuhara, and Carl Friedrich Bolz-Tereick

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 333, 39th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2025)

Abstract
Meta-compiler frameworks, such as RPython and Graal/Truffle, generate high-performance virtual machines (VMs) from interpreter definitions. Although they generate VMs with high-quality just-in-time (JIT) compilers, they still lack an important feature that dedicated VMs (i.e., VMs that are developed for specific languages) have, namely multi-tier compilation. Multi-tier compilation uses light-weight compilers at early stages and highly optimizing compilers at later stages in order to balance between compilation overheads and code quality. We propose a novel approach to enabling multi-tier compilation in the VMs generated by a meta-compiler framework. Instead of extending the JIT compiler backend of the framework, our approach drives an existing (heavyweight) compiler backend in the framework to quickly generate unoptimized native code by merely embedding directives and compile-time operations into interpreter definitions. As a validation of the approach, we developed 2SOM, a Simple Object Machine with a two-tier JIT compiler based on RPython. 2SOM first applies the tier-1 threaded code generator that is generated by our proposed technique, then, to the loops that exceed a threshold, applies the tier-2 tracing JIT compiler that is generated by the original RPython framework. Our performance evaluation that runs a program with a realistic workload showed that 2SOM improved, when compared against an RPython-based VM, warm-up performance by 15%, with merely a 5% reduction in peak performance.
Cite as

Yusuke Izawa, Hidehiko Masuhara, and Carl Friedrich Bolz-Tereick. A Lightweight Method for Generating Multi-Tier JIT Compilation Virtual Machine in a Meta-Tracing Compiler Framework. In 39th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 333, pp. 16:1-16:29, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

Copy BibTex To Clipboard

@InProceedings{izawa_et_al:LIPIcs.ECOOP.2025.16,
  author =	{Izawa, Yusuke and Masuhara, Hidehiko and Bolz-Tereick, Carl Friedrich},
  title =	{{A Lightweight Method for Generating Multi-Tier JIT Compilation Virtual Machine in a Meta-Tracing Compiler Framework}},
  booktitle =	{39th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2025)},
  pages =	{16:1--16:29},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-373-7},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{333},
  editor =	{Aldrich, Jonathan and Silva, Alexandra},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ECOOP.2025.16},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-233090},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ECOOP.2025.16},
  annote =	{Keywords: virtual machine, JIT compiler, multi-tier JIT compiler, meta-tracing JIT compiler, RPython}
}
Document
Artifact
DOI: 10.4230/DARTS.11.2.16
A Lightweight Method for Generating Multi-Tier JIT Compilation Virtual Machine in a Meta-Tracing Compiler Framework (Artifact)

Authors: Yusuke Izawa, Hidehiko Masuhara, and Carl Friedrich Bolz-Tereick

Published in: DARTS, Volume 11, Issue 2, Special Issue of the 39th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2025)

Abstract
Meta-compiler frameworks, such as RPython and Graal/Truffle, generate high-performance virtual machines (VMs) from interpreter definitions. Although they generate VMs with high-quality just-in-time (JIT) compilers, they still lack an important feature that dedicated VMs (i.e., VMs that are developed for specific languages) have, namely multi-tier compilation. Multi-tier compilation uses light-weight compilers at early stages and highly optimizing compilers at later stages in order to balance between compilation overheads and code quality. We propose a novel approach to enabling multi-tier compilation in the VMs generated by a meta-compiler framework. Instead of extending the JIT compiler backend of the framework, our approach drives an existing (heavyweight) compiler backend in the framework to quickly generate unoptimized native code by merely embedding directives and compile-time operations into interpreter definitions. As a validation of the approach, we developed 2SOM, a Simple Object Machine with a two-tier JIT compiler based on RPython. 2SOM first applies the tier-1 threaded code generator that is generated by our proposed technique, then, to the loops that exceed a threshold, applies the tier-2 tracing JIT compiler that is generated by the original RPython framework. Our performance evaluation that runs a program with a realistic workload showed that 2SOM improved, when compared against an RPython-based VM, warm-up performance by 15%, with merely a 5% reduction in peak performance.
Cite as

Yusuke Izawa, Hidehiko Masuhara, and Carl Friedrich Bolz-Tereick. A Lightweight Method for Generating Multi-Tier JIT Compilation Virtual Machine in a Meta-Tracing Compiler Framework (Artifact). In Special Issue of the 39th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2025). Dagstuhl Artifacts Series (DARTS), Volume 11, Issue 2, pp. 16:1-16:4, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

Copy BibTex To Clipboard

@Article{izawa_et_al:DARTS.11.2.16,
  author =	{Izawa, Yusuke and Masuhara, Hidehiko and Bolz-Tereick, Carl Friedrich},
  title =	{{A Lightweight Method for Generating Multi-Tier JIT Compilation Virtual Machine in a Meta-Tracing Compiler Framework (Artifact)}},
  pages =	{16:1--16:4},
  journal =	{Dagstuhl Artifacts Series},
  ISSN =	{2509-8195},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{11},
  number =	{2},
  editor =	{Izawa, Yusuke and Masuhara, Hidehiko and Bolz-Tereick, Carl Friedrich},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/DARTS.11.2.16},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-233590},
  doi =		{10.4230/DARTS.11.2.16},
  annote =	{Keywords: virtual machine, JIT compiler, multi-tier JIT compiler, meta-tracing JIT compiler, RPython}
}
Questions / Remarks / Feedback
X

Feedback for Dagstuhl Publishing


Thanks for your feedback!

Feedback submitted

Could not send message

Please try again later or send an E-mail
© 2023-2025 Schloss Dagstuhl – LZI GmbH About DROPS Imprint Privacy Contact